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The more I read about Shield, the more I want one as my next 'console' - read streaming games from my PC. As a few of us mentioned on twitter... Shield == SHIELD ? Some tie in with Iron Man 3 / Avengers 2 and product placement perhaps?Reply

A novelty/gimmick unless you want to build one gaming PC and have that gaming PC power gaming across your entire household. One gaming PC you can fully power-up with as much SLI, etc, as you can squeeze into a huge ass box that you then hide in a room far away from everyone.

Then you run your gaming through to your HTPC in your living room, your HTPC in your bedroom, your HTPC in your bathroom (toiletroller), your ultrabook out on your patio, your laptop anywhere near your home, etc.

The possibilities are endless. Hell, stream your game out to your ultrabook at the coffeeshop. I'm sure it's gonna have less latency than OnLive serving you games in TN from KA and you don't have to pay anything for beyond having nVidia hardware.

Suddenly, you don't have to buy a Razer Blade to get awesome gaming and thin. You can just buy a cheap, reasonable thin laptop. The only thing you need to spend top dollar on then is your gaming rig and you don't even have to attach a display to that. It can just be a gaming server.

You lack imagination. This could be great. It doesn't even have to just stream to PC's. It could stream to anything you can really attach a controller to. Android devices like Ouya or any tablet or smartphone would also be great.

Of course, Radeon users will be grumpy because they won't get to join in, but hey at least they got memory controller improvements to look forward to sometime around June, right?Reply

Shield is quickly moving onto my short list of things I want to get. The one problem is my limited budget forced me to make compromises when I purchased my laptop so I only have 650m, which is overclocked, but still just a 650m. Their current documentation states a 650m is required which will really make me angry since my overclocked speed should be plenty fast enough to handle it.Reply

The fact that Shield uses a fan raises a few questions about Tegra4. I get the impression this is a higher TDP chip than what we will see in tablets. That, or future tablets might be gaining active cooling.Reply

I'd guess that the functional TDP of this thing is probably in the realm of 8W so similar to the IVB ULV announced today. Considering the Exynos 5250 would spike to 8 W but typically run at 4 I can see this running at around 6-8 under typical usage.Reply

I don't think so. The T4 in this thing is probably clocked very aggressively and pushed to the limit. It's made for gaming.Additionally, coming from the One X: also T3 gets pretty hot if you game for a long period of time. Start a THD game which puts heavy load on all 4 cores and you may see temps beyond 50°C (as reported for the BATTERY). Well, a One X is not made for gaming, at least not for hours - but this thing is. So as Brian pointed out, it did not get hot during normal usage for him and the fan was not needed. But I expect the chip to heat up if use it heavily for a long period of time.Reply

Maybe not. The Tegra 3 in the Ouya has a fan and heatsink, but obviously the ones in phones and tablets don't require that. It depends on clocks and voltages. Maybe the Shield one runs higher than others. Reply

This thing is as portable as a laptop. The VITA on the other hand is super light and ultraportable, plus is backed by the big gaming companies (well, some of them) and SONY. The Shield seems like the older brother of the Xperia Play... Dedicated games will be far from console quality, similar to how FIFA Soccer on the Vita compares to FIFA on the iPad3/Android. No comparison.Reply

You need to be on Wifi with your PC in order to stream, which means you are at home. So why should I give up my big monitor, keyboard and mouse to play on a small screen with a console controller that apparently gets hot enough to need a fan?

Oh, and what on earth is a "Retinal" display? 720P on a 5" screen isn't enough to be a retina, so they call it a retinal? If that is not meant to confuse consumers, not sure what is.Reply

Unless you watched the show yesterday, the main attraction wasn't that you could stream content (games) from your PC to the 5" screen, it was the fact that you could stream that content to your TV through this controller. So instead of using your 24" screen to play your game, you can play it on your 60" HDTV without wires.Reply

Despite all the knowledge and experience and expertise, I sometimes wonder at the expectations made by you guys at anandtech.

You wonder why they didn't do 5.5" at 1080p? Really? When 720p at 5" is already retina so any more pixels would be indistinguishable? And when you're already noticing bandwidth constrained artifacts at 720p? (which of course you're still going to get at 1080p)

And then there's cost (I presume they want to sell some!!), power consumption, battery life, frame rates of native android games, the fact that there are no natural competitors in this niche to worry about out-spec'ing etc etc.

I'm not trying to be rude but 1080p would be really really dumb for nvidia for this device.Reply

Another benefit is that any game will run on ultra settings and 4x AA at 60 fps.

Artifacts may be less visible at 1080p (even if there are more artifacts) as there would be around twice as many pixels in the same area. They could also pair it with an AC router or USB3 stick if bandwidth was a problem.Reply

Calm down JNo. Anandtech is probably trying to point out that with new gear coming out now, most of them are going Full HD on small screens. I understand your point of view though. 720p is there to provide leverage for Nvidia to sell more of these at a more affordable price point. 1080p would probably increase the price significantly.Reply

I know but sometime when journalists write that something else would make, and I quote, "much more sense" I wonder if they've really thought about it.

We all want moar pixels but they cost and in this case it's actually the opposite IMO - it makes much *less* sense. Sometimes you've got to think that if a multi-billion dollar company with plenty of well paid highly intelligent people have thought not to do it that it might be for good reasons and not because they're just forgetful.Reply

Look at the PS Vita which Sony is having trouble bringing the price down on. This is way more loaded than that. AND Nvidia just said they won't sell it as a loss leader, I think implying a hefty price. It will be higher than the Vita, that's for sure. Reply

It's not more loaded. No GPS, no cameras, and probably simpler in some other respects. I imagine the Shield can be sold at the PS Vita's price or a bit lower. Not all the specs are available though, which makes estimating the price harder.Reply

HDMI is too unwieldy to be attached to something that gets moved around like this. The cable stresses the connector much moreso than other connectors like usb, rj45, or rca. It wont last long at all.Reply

One thing a couple previews have noted is the difference between this controller and other console controllers. Could you feature-request built-in support for the device (on PCs and consoles) as an input device? Then there wouldn't be the problem of switching between controller types.

The other big thing I hoped to see (once I heard about the project) was a swivel - type screen like some ultra books, where the screen could rotate 180 and fold flat, and activate software buttons in Android. That functionality would seal it for me. Reply